The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

At 28, Sara Lindqvist has more literary friends than real. She arrives in Iowa from Sweden, expecting to spend a few weeks with Amy Harris, an older woman with whom she's exchanged three years of intimate letters and books. Alas, she's arrived too late: Amy's died. For the good citizens of Broken Wheel, Sara is initially "the tourist," a troublesome curiosity, but, slowly, Sara becomes a part of Amy's fold through the people she loved and the books that mattered most to her. In a surprising decision to repay the townsfolk for their kindness, Sara honors her lost friend with an unusual bookstore, from which she carefully matches favorite titles with readers who need them most. Fiona Hardingham uses a wide range of accents and modulation to create Broken Wheel's citizens, effortlessly voicing drawling locals, upstanding mavens, suffering victims, and flamboyant outsiders. She gives Sara a Scandinavian-ish clip, while the omniscient narrator reads in poshly crisp British. Lorelei King's resonating voice intersperses Amy's wise letters into Sara's narrative.